This invention relates to a machine or apparatus for ice making and, more particularly, to a freezing mold of such machine or apparatus wherein ice products are formed from a supply of ice-making water.
There are known various kinds of ice product making machines, with the most popular type being one in which the freezing mold has a multiplicity of ice-making cells formed by a grid of a number of horizontal plates and a number of vertical plates. The ice products obtained by this type of freezing mold are naturally hexahedral in configuration and present sharp edges between the adjoining faces. Although the configuration of the ice product is thought to be desirable in appearance, a larger force is required when the cube ice is to be discharged out of the storage tank with a shovel or a dispenser with the aid of an auger, which means that an electric motor of a larger power output is required for discharging ice products with consequent increase in power consumption. Moreover, these ice products are less mobile due to their configurations and hence are not discharged in constant amounts. In addition, the ice products are stored in the tank in a heap with a larger top angle of approximately 15.degree. relative to the horizontal so that it is not possible to make the best use of the capacity of the storage tank.
Also, in the conventional apparatus for making ice products, the freezing mold is fabricated of copper with higher thermal conductivity so that ice formation is promoted and the ice products formed in the adjoining cells are united together at the open ends of the cells to give an elongated serrated chunk of ice. For obtaining the desired ice products, it is necessary to drop the chunk of ice from a high place to give it an impact and destruct it, in this manner, into separate ice products, with the result that the size of the ice product making machine is necessarily increased. When the descent stroke is reduced for avoiding the bulky size of the apparatus, the resulting ice products present complex configurations different from the design configuration, with the result that the operation of the ice storage sensor provided in the ice storage tank becomes more unreliable. Above all, the ice products may be less mobile and are unable to be discharged in constant amounts by a dispenser.
In this manner, the ice cube making apparatus has a number of deficiencies generally ascribable to the cubic configuration of the ice products.
In addition, although various kinds of the apparatus for making the ice products with other than the cubic configuration are known in the art, there are not so far presented apparatus that are simple in design and inexpensive in manufacture, because the ice-making cells of the freezing mold should be adapted to the configuration of the ice products and hence difficulties are encountered in the preparation of the freezing mold.